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I'm moving my business next month and taking a lease on a new building, I'm required (well it's prudent) that I have a solicitor handle the setting up of the lease.

This is for a 5 year term for £22,500 a year on a unit with B8 use.

I was quoted somewhere between £1,200 and £1,500 + vat to handle the lease.

Seemed an awful lot of money, I have to say I was expecting around half that. I did pose the question, what exactly are you doing for £1,500? To which I got the usual Solicitor consternation blah blah. We have to check planning consent, run searches etc.....

I did point out I've already done that as its available free from the local government websites etc.... He didn't exactly sound over the moon about that.

Is this money for old rope? Am I being overcharged? I have spoken to a couple of agents and they seem to think it's not unreasonable, just seems like an enormous amount of money for what can't be more than a mornings pen pushing?

Slighted related to this, I was surprised to find that I'd snuck under the limit for stamp duty on a lease....I had no idea you're required to pay stamp duty on commercial leases when the sum of the rent for the total period exceed £150K.....no wonder businesses are struggling in this country, the amount of tax and stealth taxes I pay just for privilege of being allowed to run my own business is eye watering.

As soon as you step outside of the world of domestic property, it appears anything with the name commercial attached to it, becomes a licence to print money for any of the associated industries.

I'm a convreyancing solciitor and I don't deal with commercial leases any more because they are so much hassle.

The trouble with any service like this is that the client thinks its all easy and straightforward until a few years later something happens and the landlord asks for a lot of money for some work or complains about the breach of some terms of the lease and you think "he can't do that..." You go to a solciitor for advice and he points out that the Landlord can do it and "your solicitor would have explained this to you when you took the lease..."

Then you wish you had a solicitor who went through the lease and explained it all and asked all the right questions and explained the answers and their significance to you.

Well having rung around a couple more it seems to be the going rate, in which case I'll have to pay it.

Like you say Richard, I could be opening up a minefield here, I need to have this watertight from the word go, in which case, if it is a few days work then fair enough.

Anyhow, with my costs, the LL costs (which it's normal for the ingoing tenant to pay on commercial property) plus surveying fees I'll be lucky to see any change from £3,500 + vat. All this for a steel shell with absolutely nothing in it.

And after all this, no one still has any idea what the rates will be, and the valuation office are so busy they can't even give us an appointment for a rating survey for the foreseeable future...what a strange way to operate....

Right after three attempt at finally getting it through their thick heads that I'm leasing and not buying this place I've got some sensible fees quoted.

Still at £150 an hour or whatever ridiculous amount these people are charging I should have to be correcting them every time they send me documents and as I've yet to sign the form appointing them I've decided to elsewhere.

Anyhow, the latest development is I've received a letter this morning stating that this lease is excluded from the Landlord & Tenant Act Protection.

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